Elliott Carter

Elliott Carter was an American composer whose kaleidoscopic, rigorously organized works established him as one of the most important and enduring voices in contemporary music.

He died on Nov. 5, 2012 in the Greenwich Village apartment where he had lived with his wife since 1945. He was 103 and had continued to compose into his 11th decade, completing his last piece in August 2012.

Classical music tends to lionize the great composer cut down in youth, but Mr. Carter, the dean of American composers, made a mockery of that trope. He celebrated his 100th birthday with a concert at Carnegie Hall Dec. 11, 2008.

He had a piece on the program, of course, but not some chestnut written when he was a student in Paris in the 1930s or an avant-gardist in New York in the 1950s or a Pulitzer Prize winner in the 1960s or a setter of American poetry in the 1970s or a begetter of chamber music and concertos in the 1980s. Mr. Carter wrote the 17-minute piece, for piano and orchestra at 98. In fact, since he turned 90, Mr. Carter poured out more than 40 published works, an extraordinary burst of creativity at a stage when most people would be making peace with mortality. His first opera had its premiere in 1999. He produced 10 works in 2007 and six more in 2008.

The new Carter piece, “Interventions,” was given its New York premiere by the pianist Daniel Barenboim and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with James Levine conducting. The program included Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” Mr. Carter said he heard that piece at Carnegie 85 years ago, a performance that helped inspire him to become a composer.

To paraphrase the musical satirist Tom Lehrer, when Mozart was Mr. Carter’s age, he had been dead for decades. Mr. Carter lived more than three times as long as Schubert. Some composers, like Verdi and Richard Strauss, produced until the end of long lives — in their mere 80s. Lionized as one of the great American composers, Mr. Carter was respected as much, if not more, in Europe. The intellectual and performing giants of the field — people like Mr. Barenboim and Mr. Levine, the pianist and scholar Charles Rosen and the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez — championed him. Despite the thorny, complex nature of much of his music, his concerts in his later years were often packed.

Audiences do not always take well to Mr. Carter’s complicated works. But players are drawn to his music because of its challenges and his ability to write well for their instruments. In his middle decades Mr. Carter could spend a year writing a piece. His recent compositions have generally grown shorter and less dense.

Mr. Carter was born in New York, the son of a lace importer. He attended Harvard with a recommendation from Charles Ives, majored in English and went to France to study composition with the legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger.